“Unknown Works by Franz Bardon” – A Talk by Lukáš Loužecký

At the end of April 2018, during the Prague Hermetic Conference, our editor, Lukas Louzecky, had a talk about his recent discoveries about Franz Bardon. This included the recently published Magical Diaries of a Bardon Student, by Josef Drabek, which we already informed our readers about, recently, along with another new book that is being released called, Little Works of Franz Bardon, which is currently being prepared.

Lukas starts his talk by introducing three books that are related to Franz Bardon, which he recently published in the Czech Republic : An Aid to Introspection by Josef Drabek and Franz Bardon, The Texbook of High Magicby Franz Bardon, and The Magical Diaries of a Bardon Student by Josef Drabek.

All of these titles are currently available in Czech only, however, they are all being prepared to be translated into English by czechhermetics.com and Vodnar publishing house.

Lukas introduces us to the fact that the Bardon tradition, like many others, had two parts: The part of the tradition that was open to the public and the inner circle teachings, which among other things, included being able to measure the Life Force of other students, along with working practically with Rosicrucian symbols and rituals. The workings of the inner circle of Opava are more closely described in The Magical Diaries of a Bardon Student.

Lukas also tells us that Bardon often shared very different materials with his separate inner circles : Those were his circles in Prague, Brno, and Opava,

A scan of the original manuscript, as seen in The Magical Diaries of a Bardon Student by Josef Drabek. Entry titled: “Meditation.”

along with other smaller circles around, then Czechoslovakia, who occasionally received different materials that were sourced from Bardon, and that sometimes came from some very unexpected sources for that time (for example, Bardon’s text about the magic of African magicians, which will be published in the Little Works of Franz Bardon)

The Golden Book of Wisdom

Lukas continues that he first had the suspicion, in November of 2017 that the Golden Book of Wisdom was not lost, when he was editing the Magical Diaries of a Bardon Student, where in one entry, written on January 7th, 1961, Josef Drabek describes a dream, where he takes the Golden Book of Wisdom with him to Prague, yet in the interpretation of his own dream, he does not suggest that this book would be something illusionary or made up, as it would be completely out of character for Josef Drabek who, in other entries, meticulously criticizes and roots out any illusionary fantasies that he might have. Lukas continues that this was the moment that he had the suspicion that the Golden Book of Wisdom still existed, and that Josef Drabek still had it in his possession, even after Franz Bardon’s death, and as a part of the Opava circle archive. Lukas continued, saying that, “I suspected that the text of The Golden Book of Wisdom still exists, but that it might be incorrectly titled or filed.”

Otti Votavova, Franz Bardon and H. J. Metzger

Lukas also said that, “a few months later, I was given a previously unknown German letter, from Walter Ogris, as part of a manuscript exchange, which was dated from April 14th, 1955, between Franz Bardon and Hermann Metzger, and where Bardon wrote that he is planning on publishing a book called, The Book of Wisdom, which is going to be written in the form of a Questions and Answers, and which sheds light on some previously asked questions from his students and friends.”

In the 1950’s, Bardon was busy putting together and publishing his three main books, leading him to assign his Prague student, Irena Novakova, with the task of working on his Questions and Answers. Her texts are dated from 1953 – 1957, however, this text was never meant to be made public, and was only meant to be used by Franz Bardon, himself, as a base outline for the final version of his book. During the time between the years 1956 – 1957, Bardon extensively rewrote the entire text into its second authorized form. The authorized version, however, never made it to a majority of Franz Bardon’s personal students, as he was arrested before he could share it with others, yet the unauthorized text, by Irena Novakova, later made it to a German publisher, and was mistakenly attributed to Franz Bardon and formed the base outline of what later became Questions & Answers. While the version that was written and authorized by Bardon never made it outside of Opava.

Comparison of the version written by Irena Novakova and the original and authorized Bardon manuscript. (marked red)

The authorized text which Bardon wrote had a theoretical section of approximately ten chapters, in which, unfortunately, six of those chapters were lost, however, today we still possess the remaining four chapters of the theoretical section, along with the entire practical section of the book in its entirety. In this picture, we see a comparison of the version written by Irena Novakova and the original and authorized Bardon manuscript, where you can clearly see that in Irena’s version, her answer to a question is only about one paragraph long, while in Bardon’s version, you can see that his answer to the same question is over a page long.

In light of this information, we can now assume that Bardon’s authorized version of Questions and Answers, which only existed in one copy, from Bardon’s type writer and with Bardon’s own personal handwritten notes, was supposed to be the practical section of The Golden Book of Wisdom.

We would like to remind our readers that we are still looking for any missing documents that are related to Franz Bardon and would like to encourage anyone who is in possession of these documents to please contact czechhermetics.com. We are now currently looking for any imagery of the original painting of the fourth tarot card by Irena Novakova.